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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The latest issue of Army Lawyer has the Army's CONTRACT AND FISCAL LAW DEVELOPMENTS OF 2006—THE YEAR IN REVIEW. Seeing how this is usually the issue I skip every year, I almost missed AL's ground breaking coverage of Congress's amendment to Art. 2(a)(10) permitting UCMJ jurisdiction over “persons serving with or accompanying an armed force in the field” in“time of war or a contingency operation.” As the issue's title suggests, the article on amendment to Art. 2 is not exactly ground breaking, rather a "review." The two paragraph review does, however, re-state the obvious (which we can all use at times), "The 2007 NDAA couched the change to the UCMJ as a 'clarification' of the application of the UCMJ. However, subjecting contractor personnel to the UCMJ during all contingency operations appears to constitute a significant change rather than a clarification." Now that our duh-moment of the morning is completed . . . back to work!

More to follow on this fascinating (at least to some---Guert go read the Caine Mutiny again) subject in May 2007, after the JSC meets. Hopefully some guidance will come out of their meeting.